Appellate

  • June 21, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Backs Subsidy Duties For Canadian Wind Towers

    A Canadian wind tower manufacturer can't get a break on countervailing duties despite being upfront about errors in its sales data, with the Federal Circuit ruling Friday that the errors raise the possibility of additional mistakes.

  • June 21, 2024

    11th Circ. Backs Fla. Agency Win In Ex-Warden's FMLA Suit

    The Eleventh Circuit refused Friday to reinstate a former warden's lawsuit accusing the Florida Department of Corrections of transferring and demoting her because she was nearing 60 and took six months of leave, saying she failed to connect the dots to show the agency was motivated by bias.

  • June 21, 2024

    Union Tells 1st Circ. It's Fit To Bring Debt Cap Challenge

    A U.S. government workers' union challenging the constitutionality of the debt ceiling urged the First Circuit to ignore the Biden administration's argument that union members couldn't explain how it harms them, saying it's reasonable to expect their paychecks will be suspended when it is reimposed.

  • June 21, 2024

    DOJ Backs Antitrust Case Against Zillow, Realtors At 9th Circ.

    The U.S. Department of Justice has urged the Ninth Circuit to revive antitrust claims from a defunct brokerage platform against Zillow and the National Association of Realtors based on design changes Zillow made to comply with association rules.

  • June 21, 2024

    4th Circ. Revives TCPA Suit Over Fax Promoting Free Webinar

    A chiropractic office in Ohio on Friday succeeded in reviving its putative class action against a healthcare technology company accused of sending junk faxes, with the Fourth Circuit finding the communication counts as an unsolicited advertisement under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

  • June 21, 2024

    DC Better Match For Net Neutrality Suits, 6th Circ. Told

    A public interest group urged the Sixth Circuit to move lawsuits over the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules to the D.C. Circuit, saying the lottery that put the cases in Cincinnati was not enacted to keep litigation out of D.C.

  • June 21, 2024

    Uber, Lyft Can't Dodge Suit Via Arbitration, Calif. Tells Justices

    California has urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to revive bids from Uber and Lyft to arbitrate allegations they unlawfully misclassified drivers as independent contractors, saying it's "commonly understood" that private parties' arbitration agreements have no bearing on whether state officials can sue for state law violations.

  • June 21, 2024

    Off The Bench: ACC-FSU Rematch, Supreme Win For Fla. Tribe

    In this week's Off The Bench, the next round of venue tug-of-war begins between the Atlantic Coast Conference and Florida State University, the U.S. Supreme Court hands Florida and the Seminole Tribe a lucrative gaming win, and Roger Goodell and Jerry Jones defend the NFL's handling of its Sunday Ticket package.

  • June 21, 2024

    Ga. Panel Orders New Trial In $2M Case Over Car Accident

    The Georgia Court of Appeals on Friday reversed a judgment, vacated an attorney fee award and ordered a new trial in a case in which a jury awarded a man $2 million in damages after he was rear-ended while heading home from work in 2018.

  • June 21, 2024

    Billing Report Order Was 'Overly Broad' In Injury Suit, Panel Says

    A Georgia appeals court on Friday vacated a trial court order requiring a medical provider and its claims manager to produce a database report with financial and billing information during discovery in a car accident case, saying the order was overly broad and didn't do enough to protect the companies' confidential information.

  • June 21, 2024

    Mich. Appeals Panel Rescinds Coverage For Auto Policy Fraud

    A Michigan appeals court panel said a trial court was wrong for not rescinding auto insurance coverage held by a woman who made misstatements on her insurance application before she was injured in an accident. 

  • June 21, 2024

    Ayahuasca Church Is Not Tax-Exempt, DC Circ. Affirms

    An Iowa church that used a psychedelic drug in its rites was correctly denied tax-exempt status, the D.C. Circuit affirmed Friday, saying the church's main purpose is using a federally illegal drug for which it lacked approval for religious use.

  • June 21, 2024

    Ex-GM Workers Can't Prove Anti-White Bias

    A Michigan appeals court rejected efforts from two former General Motors workers to revive claims that they were fired because they are white, ruling that they fundamentally misunderstood the law and failed to rebut GM's argument that their persistent use of coarse language led to the firings.

  • June 21, 2024

    Wrong Address Dooms Removal Relief Bid, 11th Circ. Finds

    The Eleventh Circuit won't reverse the long-ago removal in absentia of a Honduran woman who missed her removal hearing, citing the Board of Immigration Appeals' finding that she'd provided an inaccurate address to receive notice of the hearing.

  • June 21, 2024

    Ex-Chicago Alderman Burke Can't Delay Sentencing

    Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke can't postpone his Monday sentencing on charges of racketeering, extortion and bribery to await a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the scope of federal bribery law, an Illinois federal judge ruled Friday, saying that decision will have "little or no impact" on Burke's fate.

  • June 21, 2024

    11th Circ. Rules Hotel Operator Liable For Wages As Employer

    A hotel operator exercised enough control over a front desk worker to be his employer and is therefore liable for minimum wage and overtime, the Eleventh Circuit ruled, also noting that a lower court erred in calculating the damages.

  • June 21, 2024

    Atty Convicted Of Pot Bribe Wins Bail At 1st Circ.

    A suspended Massachusetts attorney convicted last fall of attempting to bribe a police chief to help his client secure a cannabis license will remain free pending his appeal, the First Circuit ruled Friday, reversing a district judge's decision.

  • June 21, 2024

    Mich. Panel Says Default Judgment Covered Per No-Fault Law

    A Progressive unit must pay a $250,000 default judgment in a motor vehicle negligence case even though the insurer said its policyholder failed to cooperate, a Michigan appeals court ruled, finding a state Supreme Court decision predating Michigan's no-fault insurance reform was still applicable.

  • June 21, 2024

    5th Circ. Knocks Out National Block On ACA Preventive Care

    The Fifth Circuit on Friday struck down a national injunction against Affordable Care Act requirements forcing insurers to cover a range of preventive treatments, but kept a block in place that prevents its application to the individuals and businesses in Texas that sued.

  • June 21, 2024

    Pa. Justices Will Weigh If 'Skill Games' Are Slot Machines

    The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania will take up a case and decide whether the "Pennsylvania Skill Games" that combine a chance-based game mode with a secondary memory game fall under the state's definition of "slot machines," potentially affecting many storefronts and bars where the game machines have proliferated.

  • June 21, 2024

    Ga. Appeals Seat Winner Aims To Nix Election Challenge

    The winner of a Georgia appeals court seat says his opponent does not have any proof to support her allegations of his residency discrepancies and her motion to reverse the election should be dismissed.

  • June 21, 2024

    Novel Ruling Backs Contact Sanctions For Texas Pro Se Atty

    Addressing an issue of first impression in the Lone Star State, a Texas appellate court has ruled that an attorney's pro se status did not save him from a sanctions ruling for violating the state's no-contact rule by sending communications directly to members of the Commission for Lawyer Discipline.

  • June 21, 2024

    9/11 Firm Consultant Acted Alone In Depo Leak, 2nd Circ. Told

    A New York law firm representing victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in a multidistrict litigation told the Second Circuit that a consultant who leaked a deposition transcript to the press acted by himself, asking an appellate panel to reverse millions of dollars in sanctions.

  • June 21, 2024

    6th Circ. Says Counties Not On Hook For Mich. Dam Collapse

    A Sixth Circuit panel agreed that two Michigan counties can't be forced to compensate homeowners for destructive flooding caused by a dam's collapse, finding Thursday that the counties did not cause the damage to the homeowners' properties.

  • June 21, 2024

    High Court Opens Expert Testimony Basis To Confrontation

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that Arizona prosecutors may have violated a criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses testifying against him by presenting a substitute expert witness at trial, and sent the case back down to state court for further proceedings.

Expert Analysis

  • What Have We Learned In The Year Since Warhol?

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    In the almost year since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, which was widely seen as potentially chilling to creative endeavors, seven subsequent decisions — while illuminating to some extent — do not indicate any trend toward a radical departure from prior precedents in fair use cases, says ​​​​​​​Jose Sariego at Bilzin Sumberg.

  • The Practical Effects Of Justices' Arbitration Exemption Ruling

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries, that a transportation worker need not work in the transportation industry to be exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, may negatively affect employers' efforts to mitigate class action risk via arbitration agreement enforcement, say Charles Schoenwetter and Eric Olson at Bowman and Brooke.

  • Binance Ruling Spotlights Muddled Post-Morrison Landscape

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    The Second Circuit's recent decision in Williams v. Binance highlights the judiciary's struggle to apply the U.S. Supreme Court's Morrison v. National Australia Bank ruling to digital assets, and illustrates how Morrison's territorial limits on the federal securities laws have become convoluted, say Andrew Rhys Davies and Jessica Lewis at WilmerHale.

  • Practical Pointers After Fed. Circ. Double-Patenting Decision

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    With the Federal Circuit recently denying a full court review of In re: Cellect, a decision regarding obviousness-type double-patenting, affected patent family holders should evaluate their rights through both patent prosecution and future litigation lenses to minimize risks, say Austin Lorch and Jeff Wolfson at Haynes Boone.

  • Sorting Circuit Split On Foreign Arbitration Treaty's Authority

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    A circuit court split over whether the New York Convention supersedes state law barring arbitration in certain disputes — a frequent issue in insurance matters — has left lower courts to rely on conflicting decisions, but the doctrine of self-executing treaties makes it clear that the convention overrules state law, says Gary Shaw at Pillsbury.

  • Corp. Transparency Act Could Survive 11th Circ. Several Ways

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    If the Eleventh Circuit upholds an Alabama federal court’s injunction against the Corporate Transparency Act, the anti-money laundering law could persist as a narrower version that could moot some constitutional challenges, but these remedies would likely generate additional regulatory or statutory ambiguities that would result in further litigation, say attorneys at Perkins Coie.

  • Del. Match.com Ruling Maintains Precedent In Time Of Change

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    Despite speculation that the Delaware Supreme Court could drive away corporations if it lowered the bar for business judgment review in its Match.com stockholder ruling, the court broke its recent run of controversial precedent-busting decisions by upholding, and arguably strengthening, minority stockholder protections against controller coercion, say Renee Zaytsev and Marc Ayala at Boies Schiller.

  • The Future Of BIPA Insurance Litigation After Visual Pak

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    A recent Illinois appellate court decision, National Fire Insurance v. Visual Pak, may have altered the future of insurance litigation under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by diametrically opposing a prominent Seventh Circuit ruling that found insurance coverage for violations of the act, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

  • Macquarie Ruling Raises The Bar For Securities Fraud Claims

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week in Macquarie Infrastructure v. Moab Partners — holding that a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule does not forbid omissions in company disclosures unless they render other statements false — is a major setback for plaintiffs pursuing securities fraud claims against corporations, say attorneys at Skadden.

  • Patent Lessons From 8 Federal Circuit Reversals In March

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    A number of Federal Circuit patent decisions last month reversed or vacated underlying rulings, providing guidance regarding the definiteness of a claim that include multiple limitations of different scopes, the importance of adequate jury instruction, the proper scope of the precedent, and more, say Denise De Mory and Li Guo at Bunsow De Mory.

  • NC Rulings Show Bankruptcy Isn't Only For Insolvent Debtors

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    Two recent rulings from a North Carolina bankruptcy court show that lack of financial distress is not a requirement for bankruptcy protection, particularly in the Fourth Circuit, but these types of cases can still be dismissed for other reasons, say Stuart Gordon and Alexandria Vath at Rivkin Radler.

  • A Look At Ex Parte Seizures 8 Years Post-DTSA

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    In the eight years since the Defend Trade Secrets Act was enacted, not much has changed for jurisprudence on ex parte seizures, but a few seminal rulings show that there still isn’t a bright line on what qualifies as extraordinary circumstances warranting a seizure, say attorneys at Finnegan.

  • Series

    Whitewater Kayaking Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Whether it's seeing clients and their issues from a new perspective, or staying nimble in a moment of intense challenge, the lessons learned from whitewater kayaking transcend the rapids of a river and prepare attorneys for the courtroom and beyond, says Matthew Kent at Alston & Bird.

  • 10 Years After Alice, Predictability Debate Lingers

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    A decade after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice ruling, critics continue to argue that the subject matter eligibility framework it established yields inconsistent results, but that contention is disproved by affirmance data from the Federal Circuit, district courts and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, say Dennis Abdelnour and David Thomas at Honigman.

  • Cannabis Ruling Lights Path For Bankruptcy Protection

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    A recent Massachusetts bankruptcy appellate court ruling in Blumsack v. Harrington leaves the door open for those employed in the cannabis industry to seek bankruptcy relief where certain conditions are met, but rescheduling marijuana as a Schedule III drug may complicate matters, say Jane Haviland and Kathryn Droumbakis at Mintz.

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